The human ear is hardwired to find patterns within complex sounds. Together with visual cues, we can use data sonification — or turning data into sound — to extract new information from complicated datasets that may be missed by just looking at the data. The Seismic Sound Lab at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory works to combine both senses with audio-visuals in order to learn new things about the Earth as well as to communicate that knowledge to the general public. The following sections focus on how these sounds are made directly from seismic data.
Understanding Waves
In the previous section Make Your Own Maps, we introduced a simple sinusoid. In the section, we will explore that further. We will use the same sine equation with amplitude $A$ and frequency $f$, but this time we will add phase $c$, offset $b$ :
$$ y = A \sin (2 \pi f x + c) + b $$
When we sonify data, we will want to make sure that the data are varying around 0 and therefore we will try hard to ensure that $b = 0$.
Making Your Own Waves With trinket.io
Now, we will try adding waves together! You will find that interesting behavior can emerge when two waves are summed together. When two waves are added
Listening to Sine Waves